CRSQ Archive

Volume
42, Number 4
March, 2006
Abstracts

Body Mass Estimates and Encephalization Quotients:
A Fresh Look at the Australopithecines and Homo habilis

Patrick H. Young

The australopithecines and Homo habilis have been publicized for years
as examples of evolutionary transitional forms that launched our own
human lineage. Dogmatic evolutionists have rationalized these claims
on the basis of brain expansion, encephalization quotients, and bipedalism.
However, any evolutionary justification for brain expansion in these
extinct creatures must rest in a precise model for the determination
of body mass. To insure an accurate body mass model, one must take into
account whether the animal is quadruped, facultative biped, or obligatory
biped. Past body mass estimates for the australopithecines and Homo
habilis were based on assumptions about their bipedalism that have proven
to be erroneous. When a body mass model is used accounting for the facultative
bipedalism of the australopithecines and Homo habilis, the data shows
that they are not highly encephalized, and hence nothing more than a
microevolutionary adaptation of the pan-troglodytes.

Neogene Sand-to-Pebble Size Siliciclastic Sediments
on the Florida Peninsula: Sedimentary Evidence in Support of the Genesis
Flood

Carl R. Froede, Jr.

The uplift and erosion of the southern Appalachian Mountains
provided geologic materials that were transported southward across the
Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains. For a period of time the Suwannee
Strait/Gulf Trough separated clastic sedimentation on the coastal plain
from carbonate deposition out on the Florida Peninsula. Once the terrigenous
sediments bridged this impediment, they rapidly spread southward across
northern Florida. Subsequent regional tilting and widespread erosion
along the Florida peninsula subjected these coarse siliciclastic sediments
to further transport, eventually propelling them to the northern Florida
Keys. In the Naturalist interpretation we would expect the particle
size of the transported sediments to diminish southward across the peninsula
due to both mechanical and chemical weathering over the purported millions
of years. However, the identification of quartzite pebbles beneath the
northern Florida Keys raises questions about this uniformitarian expectation.
An alternative interpretation based on the consistent average quartz
pebble particle size extending the length of the Florida Peninsula would
suggest that the geologic energy necessary to erode, transport, and
deposit the siliciclastic sediments from the southern Appalachians to
the northern Florida Keys (approximately 650 miles) is better understood
within the high energy framework of the global Flood of Genesis.

The Fiery Flying Serpent

David Woetzel

Over the years Biblical scholars have speculated about
the nature of the creature described in the Authorized Version as “the
fiery flying serpent.” The nexus of modern archaeological discoveries,
ancient historical accounts, and recent cryptozoological research provides
new insights into the identification and characteristics of this creature.
Moreover, interviews and personal observations from a 2004 expedition
that I led to Papua New Guinea convinced me that a fiery flying serpent
still survives on a remote island there.

by Mark H. Armitage and George F. Howe

Photomicrographs of lichens show what can be called “tissues.”
The functions evident in these lichen tissues provide clear support
for their origin by divine design. Macro-evolutionary explanations given
for lichen origins are demonstrated to be inadequate and unsupported.
Lichens, which are not “plants,” are seen to possess amazing,
anatomical counterparts to the complex tissues found in the “higher
plants.” Similarities like these, between organisms that are taxonomically
quite distant, suggest a “common Designer” rather than an
evolutionary “common ancestry.”